He wakes at 3:30 in the morning. Then its work by 8, where he loads shipping containers and semitrailers with paint additives. He’s home by 5, when he might exercise, depending on the day; then it’s bed until 3:30 comes again.

But it’s during those hours in the early morning, when most of the small Southern Indiana town of Corydon is still asleep, that Frank Bill writes. He writes of men who labor for a living. Men who sweat, bleed and know what it is to put in a hard day’s work.

“When the economy went bad, I got bumped to day work, which sucks,” he said. “When I was working nights, I had three or four days off a week. After my wife went to bed at 11, I could work until 4 or 5 in the morning — that’s when I got things done,” he said.

Bill, 39, is the author of the story collection “Crimes in Southern Indiana” and “Donnybrook," his first novel, published earlier this month.

There might be a few free moments throughout the day where Bill can jot a thought or two in his moleskin notebook, but it’s those hours — the dark, quiet hours of the night — where the “grit” of reality hits the page.

Bill will visit Indianapolis March 22 for a lecture on his new book at the Service Center for Contemporary Culture and Community. He spoke this week about factory life, what it means to be a masculine writer and how he found his voice amid the white-collar melodrama.

Question: Your book has exposed me to a genre that I never even knew existed: “grit lit” and “southern noir.” Do you think those are accurate descriptions of your work?

Answer: I like “grit lit” because it falls between literature and the working, struggling class and the element of crime, noir and also action adventure.

Q: What are the qualities of good “grit lit?”

A: The person to really coin the phrase was Larry Brown. He’s a writer out of Mississippi whose earlier work covers a lot of pretty rough stuff. It’s masculinity from a male point of view. A lot of male writers don’t write with that testosterone, it’s just the same old white-collar melodrama. When I first started out, I tried to write what everyone else was fitting into, but that didn’t work for me. I couldn’t relate to it.

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Q: So it’s the opposite of “chick lit?”

A: Yeah, y’all own 80 percent of the market.

Q: How do you relate to what’s in your work?

A: Growing up in a working class household — with parents always struggling to make ends meet and providing for you, putting you first and them last — you don’t realize that’s how things are until you’re older. I was raised around war vets, and while I didn’t take that for granted, it was normal. My dad was in Vietnam, my grandfather was in World War II, all of my uncles were either in Vietnam, the Korean War or both. It was never something I thought about as a kid.

The people I ran around with were wild — drunks and dopers and everything else. Looking back on it, those were characters. You don’t realize when you’re going to buy pot at 16 years-old, and they’re 35, that is their life. You’re still a kid.

Q: That could be you today. How did you wind up on a different path?

A: I work in a factory now. I knew when I turned 18 that I wanted to do something with my life. When you come of age, you get a job — insurance and stuff. College didn’t interest me.

Q: Did you always like to write?

A: I wasn’t a big reader when I was growing up. I actually didn’t start until the factory. I was working nights, started cracking open books on breaks and stuff, then became an avid reader around 1999 or 2000.

Q: And the books inspired you to start writing?

A: It was actually the movie “Fight Club,” based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The movie was about masculinity, male identity, society, labels — it shows you all these things you’re buying into, so I searched his work and he turned me on to wanting to read literature because I wanted to find other authors similar to him. Then I discovered Larry Brown. He had working class characters that I could relate to.

Q: How did you transition from avid reader to author?

A: I went through a lot of waiting, a lot of note paper, and a lot of ink pens.

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I told myself I was going to do it. I was naive like every other writer — if it could get me out of my day . . . or I guess my night job, then I’d do it. It took a long time and granted, I’m still working but I’m closer now than I was 10 years ago.

Between 1999 and 2006, I went back and forth with style structure and voice and every once in a while, I would write a good story. But basically was trying to sound like Hemingway and people like that, but I didn’t realize they were new then and if I had done what they were doing, it wouldn’t be new. They’d already done it. So for six or seven years, I wrote two novels and lots and lots of short stories.

It was about an eight- or nine-year period before my stuff was worth looking at.

Q: You mentioned voice, which is something many writers struggle with. How did you find yours?

A: With Chuck’s (Palahniuk) earlier work, he told stories or one liners but he had a certain way with the language; these writers have their own distinctive voice. Growing up, we always had our own lingo too. I remember using toboggan — which is what we call a knit cap — and someone telling me, “That’s a sled. You just wrote that he had a sled on his head.” You have to think of the vernacular of where you’re from. But I also realized that you can’t write for the market, you should write what you want to write.

A: I studied martial arts as a kid until I was about 30 years old. Then I did boxing, jiu jitsu — I’ve always liked to train. I wanted to write a book that dealt with fighting and break it down so you understand what it’s like when someone is throwing a right jab, hook, and how the other person reacts. For some scenes, I’d get up and act them out in front of the mirror. A lot of people overlook the language, too. There is some strong stuff, but I want you to see it and taste it and smell it.

Q: What’s next?

A: I’ve already sold the next two books. One is a follow-up to “Donnybrook;” the second book deals with Jarhead Earl’s father.

Q: And will the grit continue?

A: Yeah, I’ll continue to write this way. The first agent I sent the stories manuscript to — it didn’t have a title so I just called it “Crimes in Southern Indiana” — she read it immediately on her e-reader. She said there was nobody to root for. I told her, “In life, there’s not always somebody to root for.” This is showing people, who they are and how they live.